


The Affairs of Fae

by LamiaCalls



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LamiaCalls/pseuds/LamiaCalls
Summary: Madoc takes his war meeting outside, due to his wife's insistence that he see some sunlight.
Relationships: Eva Duarte/Madoc
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	The Affairs of Fae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phlyarologist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phlyarologist/gifts).



The day was balmy, the summer heat oppressive and cloying. But a sharp breeze rolled through Elfhame, bitter and bracing. It was a lazy breeze, but enough to convince Madoc to sit outside to take his meeting. That, and his wife’s insistence that he see some sunlight. War, he reminded her, cared not for seasons, but he allowed her to convince him in the end.

Sometimes, he knew that looked like weakness to other fae. But allowing mortals to have power over him would be folly. He was merely humouring her.

“Are you not worried about your weak right front?” Madoc asked, leaning over the table his servants had set up in the garden. They were a few feet from the river bank and the gentle sound of running water was, he had to admit, relaxing. Certainly, it provided him with distraction from his companion’s wearisome bungling of strategy.

“Maybe you ought to worry about your wife,” Credence said, nodding his head further down the river bank. There Eva was, laughing that strange, musical laugh of hers. It was a mortal laugh to be sure: bright and unrestrained. Madoc had hated that laugh when he first heard it. He had taken it as lying. But Eva had convinced him that it was often — though not always — the truth. He hated it even more after that. He did not like puzzles he could not unknot and she was an awfully good liar.

Now, she sat with the smithy, Justin, as she often did these days. Her hair was loose and her cheeks pink in the cool autumn air. She was beautiful and it was rare that a day passed where he was not struck by that, whatever his fellow fae might say.

“I heard Grimsen taught him the secrets of the blade. Apparently, he’ll soon be better at smithing than you are at battle, Madoc,” Pitch said, weasel that he was. “You better watch out for that one.“

They sniggered. That was the fae laughter, ugly in its truth. But what they thought of him mattered little.

“My wife would be a fool to betray me,” Madoc said, casting his gaze away from Eva. “Do you think me so stupid to marry a fool?”

He looked at them in turn, but both withered quickly under his gaze. Cowards and sycophants who were bitter of his success, he knew. Pathetic and he would be weak to allow it to frustrate him.

“Shall we return to our negotiations, or would you like to continue gossiping like fishwives?” Madoc asked.

“I suppose,” Pitch said, sneering suitably. A bitter man, it was said he had killed at least two of his children for disobeying him. It was a weak man who killed for anything but war.

But Madoc’s gaze went to his wife still.

Had he been a lesser man, the feeling in his gut might have been jealousy.

He hoped he was right, and that he had not married a fool.


End file.
